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“I guess. What did I know? I was barely eighteen and green as a frog.” He made a huffing noise.
“So what happened?”
“You know that old song about the candle in the wind? That was Crystal, blowing through life at the mercy of anyone and everything. She had problems and I felt sorry for her.” He shrugged, chagrined. “She was cute, too. Put the two together and I didn’t stand a chance when she asked me to marry her for the sake of her baby.”
“Her baby?” Even though the hated red blush crept up her neck, Jilly had to know. “Or yours, too?”
Zak’s eyes darkened to the color of rich moss, eyes that usually made her heart flutter. She couldn’t let that happen anymore. Even though it did.
“You have to believe me, Jilly. Those kids aren’t mine. None of them. Crystal and I were married about fifteen minutes. Shoot, most of the time I was at ball practice. I barely saw her.”
The unbidden vision of Zak and Crystal together stirred in the pit of her stomach as powerful as a canine virus. She hoped she didn’t throw up on Zak’s tennis shoes. “How could your parents not know?”
“I was working my way up to sharing the news.”
“They weren’t going to be happy about it?”
“Not even close. I was on scholarship, shooting for the big leagues. My dream was theirs, too. They would have been crushed.”
Jilly understood the feeling. She was crushed. Decimated. Shove a stick of dynamite in her heart and light the fuse.
“Her old boyfriend, the baby’s father, came by one day while I was in class and away she went. Her note said she’d filed for divorce to be with her soul mate.” He made a grim face. “Some soul mate.”
Jilly straightened, a fragile glimmer of hope flaring. “Then you aren’t married.”
“I don’t want to be. Never intended to be. At the time, I was too busy and dumb to consider she might not follow through.”
Jilly’s hope crashed and burned. “She didn’t.”
“No.” Zak let out an agitated sound. Mugsy licked his hand in consolation. “Looking back, I should have known. Crystal wasn’t the kind of girl who followed through with anything. Ever.”
“Oh, Zak,” she moaned. “You have a wife. You’re married.”
“No!” He slapped both hands to the sides of his head, fingers digging into his short brown hair. Surprised by the vehemence, the two dogs leaped to the floor. Zak dropped his arms, shoulders sagging, and on a long sigh said, “Yes. Technically, I guess I am.”
Jilly wondered if God believed in technicalities, but figured now was not the time to ask. Zak was more than freaked out. She gripped his forearm with her fingers. He was trembling. Or was that her?
“Okay, let’s think about this rationally,” she said. Yeah, right, and while we’re at it, let’s fly to Mars. “Why is Crystal here now? What does she want? A divorce? Like in that movie, Sweet Home Alabama?” Please Lord, let that be it. If Crystal divorced him, Zak would be free. Then another, much worse thought hit her. “Or did she change her mind after all this time and want you back?”
Jilly hated the thoughts running through her head. Ways to get Zak out of a marriage when marriage was ordained by God. What was wrong with her?
She knew the answer to that one. She loved a married man. She wanted him for herself. What kind of horrible person was she?
“Crystal has cancer,” he said flatly. “She doesn’t have much time left.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Guilt rushed in. The woman was dying and all Jilly could think about was how to steal her husband. “She’s so young.”
She wanted to ask what Crystal’s illness had to do with Zak, but guilt wouldn’t let her. “Why did she come to you? For money? Or what?”
“I don’t even know where she lives,” he said numbly. “Or what she’s been doing for the last ten years. It’s obvious she doesn’t have much. She’s broke and sick and alone.”
Compassion, usually welcome, rose in Jilly. As much as she disliked the words, she forced them out. “If she needs your help, you have to give it.”
“I know, but I can’t do what she asked. I just can’t.” He took her hand, a casual gesture.
“Tell me. Maybe I can help.”
“I don’t think so.” He lifted her fingers one by one, traced a spray of freckles across the back and then gripped her hand with such force that she knew he was about to say something momentous. As if having a wife wasn’t momentous enough. “She asked me to take her kids—” he hesitated “—after…”
Jilly frowned. What was momentous about that? Crystal was desperately ill with little time left. “Until her family comes for them?”
He released her hand and sat back. “There is no family, Jilly. No one. She doesn’t have a single person anywhere to turn to. No one except me—the long-lost husband who didn’t even know he was one.”
Zak’s meaning seeped in, slow and deadly as arsenic. He not only had a wife, but he was also about to become a father.
Zak watched the color drain from Jilly’s face. Her freckles popped out like rust stars against a porcelain sky. She had beautiful skin, a fact he noticed every time she blushed, which was often. She made a tiny noise of distress and Zak resisted the urge to toss his arm over her shoulders and give her a hug. He didn’t like seeing Jilly upset, especially when he was the cause.
“You sent her away,” she said, blue eyes sad and dismayed.
“What else could I do? I’m not their father. I don’t even know her.”
“But now that she’s gone, you’re having second thoughts.”
“Yes, of course I am!” What kind of man would he be if he didn’t? He dragged both hands down his face and blew from his lips like a horse. “She’s dying, Jilly. I feel like a piece of scum for refusing her anything. At the same time, I’m not the person for the job. I can’t be a father to three strange, grieving, needy children. I don’t want to be. I can’t be. The whole idea is nuts.” He was starting to get hysterical. Zak Cool, the pitcher with ice water in his veins and fire in his left arm, was teetering on the edge.
Jilly pushed Satchmo off her lap. “Go lay down.”
“I wish I could,” Zak said and when Jilly rolled blue eyes at him, he grinned a little at his joke. “Dogs are lucky. When something upsets them, they can go to sleep and forget about it.”
Jilly wasn’t amused. If anything, she’d gone even paler. A tiny, worried pulse beat in the hollow of her throat. “You’re not a dog. You can’t go to sleep and forget about it. So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I gave her some money. She was broke, exhausted, sick.” He scrubbed his face with both hands, not that it did a bit of good. “Man, I’m a jerk.”
Jilly pushed at Satchmo who tried to regain her lap. “Was she going back to her home?”
He hadn’t asked. He’d been so busy getting her out of his house, his driveway, his life that he hadn’t asked what she would do or where she would go. “She looked tired. I suggested she go to a motel.”
“Kitty’s place?”
“Yeah.” He’d soothed himself with the thought that Kitty Carter ran a clean, safe, reasonably priced motel. “Maybe I should call Kitty and ask her to keep an eye on them.”
“I don’t know, Zak. This doesn’t seem right to me.”
“Nothing is right today. I want a replay.”
“I’m sure Crystal does, too.”
“Thanks for kicking me in the teeth,” he said wryly. “I deserved that.”
“Maybe you should go over there and bring them back here.”
“Here? To my place? Are you nuts?”
“Regardless of the particulars, regardless of when or why you married her, she’s legally still your wife.”
“What if she’s lying?” he asked, desperate to be free of this problem.
“Wouldn’t that be easy to check?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe she’s only saying this because she remembers me as a soft touch.”
“Zak,” Jilly admonished softly.
“I don’t want to be married, Jilly. Not to anyone, but certainly not to a woman I don’t remember very well who is dying of cancer and wants to give me three kids.” He could hear how shallow and selfish he sounded, but this was his life she was talking about!
“That’s exactly the point. Crystal is dying. She needs you right now. Don’t you think it’s terribly, pathetically sad that she has no one else in the world to turn to but a man she’s not seen since college?”
Put that way, Crystal’s plight looked even worse than it was. And it was bad. “I told her I’d help her. In some way. We can ask at church. Maybe someone will take her in. Maybe someone will want the kids. Or I can hire a nurse to stay with her.”
Jilly put a hand on his arm. “I don’t know, Zak. Something about that seems wrong to me.”
“I can’t move her in here. I don’t even know her. I have a life, too. What are people going to think if I move a strange woman into my house?”
“What about the kids? Where do they go? What happens to them? They can’t care for a dying mother.”
He closed his eyes, blew out another breath. “There’s the kicker. They have no one to turn to and no place to go.”
Jilly bit her bottom lip and he could see the wheels turning inside her head. “Look, all of this has happened too fast. You’re reeling from shock. Maybe you need some time to think it over.”
“I don’t think Crystal has the luxury of time.”
“Oh, Zak.” She swallowed, pretty face tragic. Jilly was a woman with a heart as big and warm as the sun. She took in all kinds of strays and rejected animals, nursed them to health and found them homes when she could. But three children weren’t puppies she could fatten up and farm out. “She’s in a desperate situation.”
So was he. “I know.”
“Can you live with yourself if you don’t do something?”
He wished the answer was different but admitted, “I don’t know. Probably not. God help me.” And he meant that voiced prayer with every cell in his weak brain.
“She’s dying, Zak. She must be scared. For herself. For her kids.” She squeezed the back of his hand. “I can’t imagine how terrible her life must be right now.”
“You’re killing me.”
“I’m trying to put myself in her position. What would I do? What would I need? How hard would it be to ask a near stranger for charity? You can’t turn your back. Even if the marriage is on paper only, the two of you are connected. You made a vow to her, even if it was ten years ago. You have an obligation, under God and the law.”
Jilly was his best friend. She wouldn’t steer him wrong. She wanted the best for him and she wasn’t any happier about this than he was, but her head was clearer. His was as tangled as spaghetti. As a Christian, he wanted to do what was right. As a single man, he wanted to jump in his Titan 4x4 and hit the road.
“I can’t take on three kids. I won’t.”
“It’s a huge decision.”
“Exactly. Those kids need a family. They need someone who wants them and can give them the attention kids deserve. That is not me.”
Jilly patted his shoulder. “You’re a good guy.”
“No, I’m not. I’m struggling.”
“You’ll do the right thing.”
He turned his head to look at her. “Why weren’t you around ten years ago to say that?”
She smiled a funny smile. “I wish I had been.”
Zak figured he should do some serious knee time, but God hadn’t gotten him into this mess in the first place. If he’d been living right back in college, he might have been smarter. Or not. The fact remained, he hadn’t been.
“A motel room is no place for a sick woman and a pack of rug rats,” he conceded.
“She can’t stay there indefinitely, and if she has nowhere to go… You need to find out, Zak. Does she have anywhere else to go?”
“I’ll talk to her again.”
“And then what?”
He sighed, weary and confused, a load of responsibility bearing down with colossal weight. “I don’t know.”
As a Christian, his conscience said he had to help Crystal, even though their relationship ended years ago. If helping meant bringing her into his home where she could be at peace for her remaining days, maybe he could do that. But the arrangement was temporary. Only temporary.
Maybe, just maybe, a miracle would happen and a family would be found for three orphaned children.
Because he couldn’t keep those kids. No matter what.
Chapter Four
Even though Zak spotted Crystal’s battered car parked near one of the tidy, flower-rimmed motel units, he stopped at the office first. Call it stalling, call it cowardice, but he wasn’t ready to talk to Crystal again. His head was still as muddy as the Redemption River on a rainy day.
The little bell tinkled above the door as he stepped into the cool, rose-scented office, nerves jittery. The blond proprietress, Kitty Wainright Carter, came around a souvenir display counter with a cheerful smile.
Zak spoke first. “You’ve changed things in here.”
The office had once been a memorial to her late war-hero husband. Now, the depressing military shrine had been replaced with whimsical souvenirs of the Oklahoma Land Run and the Old West.
“What do you think?”
“Looks good.” A small beagle-type dog came from behind the case to greet him. Zak bent down and scratched the floppy ears. “Hi, Milo.”
“Redecorating is fun,” Kitty said, “though I’m not doing much of it anymore. Harvey and Faye run the desk for me now full-time. I only came in today to put up the schedule and check on things.”
“I heard you were going to sell out.”
